Article: Heat don't seem to have challenger

Ebullient in their Game 7 win, beaten and battered but finally victorious, the Chicago Bulls on Saturday celebrated as a stunned Brooklyn Nets team headed for the tunnel, the showers and the long and disappointing offseason.

But the Bulls, while worthy of praise for the poise and toughness they took to gut out a 99-93 Game 7 win without Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich, are also a perfect metaphor for the state of the NBA playoffs in general as we kick off the second round Sunday: full of teams good enough to advance, but possessing few if any real challengers for the Miami Heat.

Indeed, as the postseason was reshaped by storylines about the Oklahoma City Thunder losing Russell Westbrook and two of the top four seeds falling in the West and the Knicks looking surprisingly vulnerable against the Celtics — as the hardships and mediocrity of everyone else crystallized — the Heat waited.

They waited to play. They waited for Dwyane Wade to heal. They waited for Sunday afternoon’s inevitable announcement that LeBron James and his insane level of play had earned him his fourth Most Valuable Player Award. They waited to see if any real challenger would emerge on either side of the conference divide.

Few did. Instead, several faded away.

In the Eastern Conference, Chicago remained without Rose and its remaining players seemed to fall, one by one. The Bulls will limp into their Monday opener against Miami banged up and formidable only in the sense that they hate the Heat and will burn with the desire to beat them. The Bulls are tough, and they have heart, and in dispatching an underwhelming but more talented Nets team, the Bulls reasserted themselves as the NBA’s most capable team when it comes to willpower and tenaciousness. That can get you past Deron Williams and the Nets. It’s highly unlikely to be enough against LeBron and the Heat.

Grizzlies are chokers and don't have enough offense. Missing a clutch player who could create his own shot and make clutch shots like Rudy Gay is missed. Mike Conley is solid at times, but not exactly anything special.

heat weren't healthy their first year and had to overcome a lot of problems to get to the finals, now luck is on their side this year. health and luck, 2 things every championship team needs

mind you they only had 1 or 2 maybe's this year in terms of REAL threats which have no been eliminated with health issues, all these other teams with injuries didn't stand a chance even if they were healthy..all irrelevant imo (especially knicks), surprisingly hasn't effected excitement level of playoffs but ye, they weren't about to do no damage to heat's run to the finals, including the bulls with a healthy rose, they might win 1-2 games but they are essentially the same team with the same personell with the same system that lost in 5 with home court

basically, miami improved about 5x from last year from personell/depth to actually running smoother system offensively and defensively, while everybody else kinda just stayed the same.